To Watch Or Not To Watch, And Does It Really Matter?

I think I have referred to our night monitoring system. Basically there are several cameras on the guys' side of the house. At night, there is a central location where all of the homes are monitored. We have gotten calls in the middle of the night for things like "so and so is making a big mess cooking in the kitchen" - (um yeah, please don't ever wake us up for that, we'll deal with it in the morning) as well as non-client related incidents such as "the front door just blew open." (This is Kansas and that DOES happen. Crazy!) Anyway, they also call in the mornings if they don't see us and we stand in front of the camera and wave to them, so they can go home.

Even though it is only monitored at night, we have a monitor on our side of the house which also displays what the cameras are seeing. (Nice if we hear noises and don't want to go over, we can turn on the side-by-side (the official name) and check out the goings-on.) The side-by-side flashes to each camera and stays in that room for about 2 seconds. The video is great and even when it's dark, you can still see everything. I'm way impressed with that (tells a little about how technologically ignorant I am.) The only thing we don't have is sound - probably good since it flashes from room to room.

All that was said to say this. Last night Ms. Night Monitor calls to tell me that the connection to our house was down and we might have to sleep with the connecting door open. She told me to check my side-by-side to see if it was working so we could tell if it was a camera problem or a connection problem. Ours was working. So she says, "Good deal, just keep your side-by-side on while you are sleeping so you'll know if something happens and we'll get somebody out there to work on that tomorrow." I was very confused but said okay and hung up. Lowell had the same reaction as I did and if I have done any kind of job describing this system, then you, dear reader will probably feel the same.

Somebody at the central night monitoring place is paid to stay up all night and watch the monitors while we sleep. So if that person can't watch, we can just turn ours on, go to sleep, and get the same results? I dare say not. But when I think about it, I have to wonder if the people who are actually supposed to be watching may just be sleeping too, and therefore don't see the problem with asking us to watch the monitor, with no sound, while we are asleep...